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Friday, March 9, 2012

Im sure that all of you have seen, or heard of, the Kony 2012 video circling the internet.
I watched it, I felt it, and I wanted to do something about it.
In one of those, a-million-thoughts-running-through-your-head-in-one-second moments, I ended up feeling bad for everything I have when so many people have nothing. I mean, I complain about not having a car and having to be stuck at home all day. Talk about a self brought on guilt trip.
All day the images of those children ran through my head. And it's not just those children, because we'd be naive to think that things like that, and worse, doesn't happen all over the world. Every day children are abducted, raped, beaten, murdered, and sometimes just because there are too many of them. It's not fair, it's not right, and of course it has to be stopped. Everything I looked at in the abundance of my life made me feel like I was in the wrong to have so many things, to have such freedom. I thought about the people who give up everything to become missionaries just to have the chance to change a few lives, how at that moment they were choosing to bathe in streams instead of hot steamy showers, and sleep on dirt floors instead of memory foam mattresses. I felt like maybe I should be the one doing something, doing more.

Then, laying in my bed at night when my mind was too active to fall asleep, a thought hit me; I don't need to feel bad for what I have, for what I was given, and not everyone is meant to be missionaries in some far off country. We can use anything we do as a mission field if we choose to.
I don't know why things are they way they are, or why I was blessed with this life instead of someone else. But each and every one of us is exactly that; blessed, chosen. I'm sure there is a reason why we aren't the ones suffering in third world countries. Maybe it's because God is hoping that we use what we have to bless others. It doesn't have to be through financial means; each of us has talents or abilities, hobbies, that we can use to bless other people, to show how thankful we are that we were chosen to live such abundant lives.

My hope is that through everything I do I can glorify God. That I will have the instantaneous reaction to praise him in the good, the bad, and the ugly.